j.k. rowling

[redcandlelight]

re-watching harry potter with dc.
oh.my.god.
she portrays institutional capture so very well.

I'd recommend books 1-3 for ages 7 (with adult support) age 8-9 for good readers and 10-11 for less confident readers.

Books 4-6 have deaths and a dark tone so age 12+.

Book 7 has one swear (bitch) and a dark tone so again 12+

Ickabog similar to books 1-3, there's some deaths, but it's people getting shot and not particularly gruesome. Age 10+ would get the most out of it.

I can never decide who my favourite is... Hermione, Luna, Ginny or Prof McGonagall.

Even like Aunt Petunia a little bit, even though she treated Harry very badly.

@Wigglegiggle0520

Another one in awe of her. What a woman.

What age would you recommend HP and the Ickabog for? It’s been a long time since I read HP.

I read the Ickabog and the first 4 HP books to DS who's 6 almost 7 and he loved them. He desperately wants the 5th HP but I think it's too dark for now so I'm planning to wait a year.

From what I can gather quite a few kids seem to have read them all by the end of primary but I wonder how much they pick up/miss as some of the themes are definitely more adult in the later books.

I knew a pupil who'd read them all by age eight. But she also had read The Hobbit too and was fairly precocious. She also would have reread them as an older kid as it was her 'thing'.
She also came to school on world book Day dressed as gollum. It was a great costume!

Reading HP with DD1 and 2 (7 and 10). We started when DD2 was 6 and have been at it for 18 months now, reading religiously for about 30-45mins a night. It takes ages, but part of that is the questions and the talk around the issues arising, making connections and speculating as to characters' motives and agendas. I love bedtime and am so grateful to JKR for giving us these great characters through which to explore important issues.
I was quite pleased to walk in on DDs cheering that their 'Harry Potter boyfriend' (online quiz) was Neville.
If reading to your DC is an option, I think it is preferable to letting young DC at the books independently; I think they'd miss a lot of subtlety. I teach primary and see lots of kids blasting through the whole series in a term, and hoping they'll return to them again to 'mop up' the details they may have missed through competitive speed reading.

@YouWereGr8InLittleMenstruators great username.

Thanks, Strange. I nicked it from Twitter; someone else's comment on one of Emma Watson's posts promoting inclusive language. I laughed so much, and thought it needed to be memorialised in some small way

JKR is writing the next Strike book even as we speak.

I am going to book a week off work as soon as the release date is announced.

My DD, just turned 7, has read (partly herself and partly us reading to her at bedtime) the first 4 books and watched the first 4 films. I was uneasy about reading book 4 but we took it slowly and she wasn’t phased by it. We talked through the topics that could be scary before she watched the film and in the end the thing she found the scariest was the Hungarian Horntail!

We are taking a long pause before book and film 5, though we said we will probably go to HP World this summer. In their place we’ve read all The Faraway Tree books and have just started The Spiderwick Chronicles. We may look at The Hobbit after those.

On JKR herself, I love her! She’s inspirational and, as others have said, could easily have turned her back on this debate and carried on with her comfortable life. Instead she chose to speak out knowing others are not able to.

She’s also got a wicked sense of humour - she had a hilarious Twitter exchange with Matthew Lewis (actor who played Neville) in 2015 after he posed topless for Attitude magazine. She posted to say what a shock it was and that she needed advance warning of these things. He apologised and she told him she supported him in everything he did, but that he should go put some clothes on now 😂😂😂

twitter.com/mattdavelewis/status/601357492816347137?s=21

My dds have just discovered the joys of Harry Potter and have been avidly the reading the books and watching all the movies.

We’ve had some of the books around for a while but I’ve had to buy the rest to complete the set - I’m so pleased that they are enjoying them. They have so many layers and rich detail that they bear reading and watching repeatedly.

Thanks JKR!

"Films have such good classic actors, shame about the kids. Movie 1 and 2 suffer most from it."

I put that down to the direction and script. They were trying to make British kids speak and behave like Americans and it didn't work very well. Those weird gestures Harry makes during the Quidditch match in film 1, for example.

And, yes, Peeves was so obviously missing from the films - Rik Mayall would have been fantastic, too.

I will have to rewatch with Americanisms in mind.
Apparently they cut Peeves because they felt he didn't suit the look of the film. Also, he kept making the cast laugh (Rik that is).
They really need to release the outtakes.

I was just reading about Rik Mayall as Peeves last night funnily enough. He gave a very funny interview about it all: www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/06/never-saw-rik-mayall-harry-potter-movie

I’ve just finished listening to all the audio books.

I agree with you OP about the institutional capture.

Having recently learned about Jo Rowling having suffered domestic abuse there were certain moments in the story which were emotional in a different way this time as it seemed to me that the insight into abusers and abused may have been drawn from personal experience.

I am really rather hoping that there will be more Harry Potter books or books about that world.

^I am really rather hoping that there will be more Harry Potter books or books about that world.^

Haha. Dream on! I think she's been finished for at least a decade (I don't count the cursed child' as canon!)

There are:
Fantastic Beasts
Quidditch through the ages
Poltergeists, politics and power

Mini books if you are interested.

Also Pottermore has writing about the world by JK (even though if I were her I'd withdraw it for them loudly condemning her, but she's much nicer than me!)

I read all 7, and the ickabog to DD by age 6 and she's seen all the films, virtually knows them off by heart. She found the last ones darker but actually says 7 is her favourite! She's now 7 and yesterday demanded I start reading again from book 1 so here goes...

I refuse to watch the HP films now, and anything else those ungrateful, talentless little shits are in.

Ah such a relief to see this isn't another one of "those" threads.

I've got "The Ickabog" for my son but the language and themes are a bit advanced for his age, so I'm looking forward to reading it with him in a year or two.

One of her major themes is about doing the right thing even when it's unpopular and will lose you friends. Even when it will get you into trouble. She obviously believes what she's writing.

I truly admire her as a woman of principle and integrity. I don't necessarily share all of her political views but her sheer decency permeates all of her writing - fiction and otherwise - in my opinion.

She's top of my "who would you most want to be trapped in a lift with" list. As well as everything else, I think she'd be a very interesting conversationalist and bloody funny to boot.